


The Adventures of Argus Armstrongman - Lone Star Detective

by LookWhosFhtagn



Category: Neoscum
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-06-27 16:16:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19794481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookWhosFhtagn/pseuds/LookWhosFhtagn
Summary: This chapter is not in the NeoScum Canon.





	1. At the Threshold of Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [NeoScum](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/498256) by Gannon Reedy, Casey Toney, Blair Brit, Mike Migdall, Eleni Sauvageau. 



****

**Case 637435: Attempted Murder, Breach of Trucking Contract**

I took a long drag from my vape, the cotton candy flavored mist rolling over my tongue and down into my lungs. Exhaling sharply, the vapor spewed out, forming a rolling cobweb that caught the bright neon of the Indianapolis skyline. It was going to be a long night, no two ways about it. Dispatch put me on the trail of some deranged asshole. Details were slim, so i just poured through the initial transcripts in AR. Trucker by the name of Beans picked up another trucker. All pretty standard trucker code bullshit. But then, the crazy asshole or his friend or someone just starts vomiting everywhere. Standoff ensues, Beans gets paid off with a hacked cred stick and then held at gunpoint. Manages to barely make it away. The National Society of Honored Truckers has already stricken the guy from its membership, but they’re pushing had for…stricter punishment. Which was why I was outside some skeevy VR sex dungeon.

Gotta love the job. When you’re not getting shot at by gangers, you’re stepping through all kinds of fluids trying to find an asshole for a bunch of greasy truckers.

I cased the joint, scanning for any signs of my suspect: Dak Rambo, human male in his mid twenties to thirties, darker hair, hat. The spectrum analyzers in my cyber eyes hummed loudly as I peered along the asphalt of the parking lot. Top of the line tech. Perfect for finding clues…but not really necessary when you find the door of a motel room wide open, unattended. Dreading what I’d find, I stepped into the dim room, finding a naked man sitting in a chair, holding a bucket of ice against his genitals.

“Oh drek, please, don’t hit me anymore! I won’t hassle anyone about pop culture knowledge again!” The man cowered, ice spilling out of the bucket.

“I have no damn clue what you are talking about. But I’m looking for a man. Goes by Dak. Dak Rambo. Human. About this tall.” I motioned with my hand. “Hat.”

The man dropped the bucket, displaying his grotesquely swollen testicles to me. “Yeah, I know that son of a bitch! He was with that wizard asshole who decked me in the balls with his magic fists! Those two and the girl and the guy with the cyber eye!”

Averting my gaze, I held up a hand to block any ability to view his wrecked sack. “Sir, sit back down and cover your boys.”

“Sit down?” The orc man protested, his voice cracking and hitting an amusing octave. “I’m not going to sit down! I want to know where those dickholes are so I can-”

“It’s being dealt with, sir.” Flashing him my badge, I added. “Argus Armstrongman, Lone Star Security.”

The orc spit on the floor. “Lone Star? Where were you when my freakin’ ouevos were getting scrambled?! Damn cops.”

“Sir, calm down. If you cooperate and give me any information you have, I-”

“And he took a shit in my bathroom and broke the flusher!” The orc shoved me on the shoulder. “But you’re not here to deal with that. I called Lone Star and you guys told me you’d get to it in a few weeks!”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Well then I think you should be happy. You got service early.”

The long haired pretty boy orc just glared and shoved me again. “Fuck you, pig.”

And that was when I grabbed the stun baton from my belt and brought it full force up into that unfortunate green scrotum, knocking the wind out of the rude orc before clicking the button on the grip and sending a strong electrical current through his body. The ruined man cried out, crumbled to the ground, and soiled himself in a shameful and undignified manner that will be omitted from all reports.

As I loomed over the drooling, whimpering orc, I pushed the baton on his chest and spoke slowly. “Where were they going?”

“Don’t know…” He groaned weakly, eyes wide with fear. “Just said….technocrust.”

I shrugged and collapsed the baton, storing it back on my belt. “It’s a start. Thanks for your time, sir. Good luck to you and your boys in the future.”

Leaving the soft sobs behind me, I emerged into the warm Indianapolis night, peering at the harsh glow of the hulking monsters that rose from ground and scraped the sky.

“I’m coming for you, Rambo. You and your friends.”


	2. Questions in Neon

**Case 637435: Attempted Murder, Breach of Trucking Contract, Breaking and Entering, Assault, Gross Sexual Misconduct**

I’d been wracking my brain for hours, trying to fit the pieces off the puzzle together. Based on the statement submitted by the unfortunate orc in the hotel, Dak Rambo wasn’t alone. He was working with a crew: a male human wizard, a female elf, and an augmented human male. What’s more, they were working some sort of a job related to the Technocrusts that were seeping into the underbelly of the city. Just what I needed to make hunting a sociopathic trucker more interesting: a rabble of filthy, smelly, politically charged gangers.

My cruiser was on auto, taking a random route through the city while I looked over Dak Rambo’s record. I’d swapped the cotton candy cartridge out of my vape, deciding that an all-nighter like this called for something a bit more abrasive. The cloud of anise passed over my tongue and into my lungs, the cocktail of stimulants diffusing into my bloodstream. I exhaled sharply out my nose in two jets, the resulting plumes cascading into the pop up table my deck was resting on. The white streams curled into the keys as I typed, pulling up information on his likely associates.

The first and most obvious was Tech Wizard, a children’s show host who had recently decided to walk on the wild side. Descriptions of him often included words such as doughy, unimposing, laughable and vomit. Looks like I found out who set this whole thing off in Beans’ truck. Now I just needed to figure out why he had given up the limelight for the shadows.

The second member of Dak’s team took a little more time to uncover. Cross-indexing previous associations with criminal reports and records of augmentation. There was always the chance that his gear was off-the-grid, black market chopware, but I got the impression otherwise. It was that old detective instinct, firing up without warning. I was about to give up when I found my decker: Zenith. His well-kept appearance was a stark contrast to the trucker and the wizard. Having him on the crew, it just raised more questions than answers.

As the sun rose, swallowing up the brilliant pinks, blues and greens of the city’s writhing skyline, I punched the power button on my deck with my finger. The woman, despite all my efforts, remained a ghost. She was either new blood or her connection with Dak was buried so deep that you’d start hitting bedrock trying to find it. An old friend? A lover? A rival? I just didn’t know. Two out of three wasn’t bad, though. And bringing her and the others wasn’t my job. I was there for Rambo.

Just as I was about to transfer the cruiser to auto, I heard chatter over the comm. It was the cold, detached voice of dispatch. “CAR 34, YOUR NEXT ASSIGNMENT IS BEING SENT TO YOU. MULTIPLE HOMICIDES. POSSIBLE GANG RELATED ACTIVITY INVOLVING TECHNOCRUSTS.” As the outdated software droned out the report, my fingers tensed. I took another long pull of licorice and let it stir in me, centering myself before turning my deck back on and pulling up the new info. The offices of Monk, Colby, Dulet-Johnson full of dead tech-hobos, blood and prototype robotics scattered everywhere. What’s more, there was a security guard who only remembered a group of three weirdos showing up before blacking out: a trucker, a decker, and an elf. And if I had to bet my paycheck, I’d say his sudden case of narcolepsy was our good friend Tech Wizard.

“Hot damn,” I said, grabbing the wheel and turning sharply to the left, weaving through traffic. More clues meant more leads which meant one step closer to catching this asshole.


	3. Looming Shadows

**Case 637435: Attempted Murder, Breach of Trucking Contract, Breaking and Entering, Assault, Gross Sexual Misconduct, Trespassing, Unlicensed Gang Warfare, Unauthorized Corporate Espionage**

The annoying hum of florescent lights droned on overhead as I fidgeted in the hard, plastic chair of the Lone Star Security Services Indianapolis Division Headquarters. I hated being at HQ. Every minute I spent among the paper pushers and the boot lickers was a minute that I wasn’t catching my perp. But sometimes, you have to play ball if you want to see results. So like a good little detective, I’d come to speak to the boss. Deputy Chief Ignatius Ferrero Moon Dusseldorf had never been a fan of my methods; I’d crossed one too many lines for that fat, greasy dwarf. If it weren’t for the fact that my numbers were so good, he’d probably have fired me years ago. And now here I was, ready to come hat in hand to the bloated, beady-eyed vermin.

But if that’s what it took to catch Dak, then so be it. Nobody gets away from me. Nobody.

The svelte piece of elven eye candy he called a secretary strolled out, her almost inappropriate skirt hugging those hips. She was gorgeous, but there was a sadness in her eyes that spoke volumes: discontent at days, weeks, months of having a vile little toad drooling over you, making comments, possibly worse. As I studied her, she noticed my gaze and we had a silent moment. Her expression changed and I tried my best to soften my usually stony features.

She just gave me a nod, then slipped back into the persona all good secretaries adopted: bubbly enthusiasm. “The Deputy Chief will see you now, Detective Armstrongman.”

My knees creaked as I stood up. With fifteen of my forty years spent walking beats and chasing down gangers and tweaked-out burners, I’m surprised they still worked as well as they did. And now that fifteen years of hard work, effort, and sacrifice was being put on the table. The debt was being called in.

As I opened the door to Dusseldorf’s office, the scent of cheap aftershave hit me like the first of a troll bouncer during a bar fight. It was a powerful, pungent, citrus monstrosity that offended as many senses as it could. “Argus, come in. Mavis gave me the deets on your latest case. Seems like this is getting interesting. Trucker fight turns into gang brawl and-”

I cut him off right there, my voice level, volume forceful but not aggressive. “It’s more than that, Deputy Chief. This Dak Rambo case has layers. Like some kind of seven layer dip, but we ran out of salsa and started using blood.”

Dusseldorf pursed his fat lips together. Maybe he thought it made him look pensive, but to the world it just made him look like a duck. A fat, smelly, worthless duck. “As much as I enjoy your flair for the dramatic, Argus, I’m not seeing why you needed to speak with me. I’m very, very busy.”

“Sure you are.” I choked down my contempt and vitriol, feeling them settle in my gut like a pound of lead. “But I’ve been doing research. Keeping my ears open, calling in contacts and informants…you know, real police work.” There was an emphasis on the word real.

The pudgy dwarf crossed his arms curtly, feeling the sting of my veiled insult while not wanting to blatantly reveal his indignation. “Well, by all means, tell me what the best damn detective in Indianapolis has found out.”

I pulled out my vape and adjusted the settings for maximum flavor and maximum stimulant. This had been an all-nighter and it was catching up to me. With Dusseldorf scowling at me, I took an absurdly strong pull of that sweet, rolling cloud of uppers. A plume of lemon flavored mist left my mouth in a slow, billowing fog. “This Rambo team, they’re not just some joke. After the Monk, Colby, Dulet-Johnson scene, I found them taking part in some death fights, the kind that Marco is inv-”

“Big Marco.”

“Huh?”

“We’ve been over this, Argus. He wants to be called Big Marco. And he makes a sizable contribution to the Lone Star Security Services Widows Fund, so we call him Big Marco.”

My fist clenched tightly. “Fine. They’re the kind Big Marco is involved in. Here.” I showed him some pictures from a camera feed, showing Dak’s crew, obviously masquerading as death fighters.

Those beady dwarf eyes surveyed the screen. “Wait a sec…no, hold on. That’s Dr. Zef Wongburger, Mustachio, Skull Kid, and Fist Wizard! I saw their pics on the death fight feed roster. Good shit.”

“It’s a disguise, damn it! They’re the for real deal. They’re dangerous. Deadly. And more than that, I think they’ve got some strings attached. Serious strings. Gangs from all over, possible black ops, the Chicago Illuminati, the Anti-Wizarding Association, and I’m pretty sure that there ties to an honest to god dragon.”

Dusseldorf had a faint glimmer of recognition. Maybe that tiny crumb of grey matter in his head was actually firing. “Sweet TechnoChrist, this is serious.”

“It is. Which is why I need this.” I tapped the screen of my commlink and showed him the outline I’d made. “A taskforce of serious players. Mando Mombopolis, the augmented elf close-quarters combat expert. Talia Smock, the dwarf decker who burned the Chrome Dome network on a weekend. Shandalee Shanana, the troll arms and explosives savant who held off Salish militants out west. And Dinkly to be our rigger.”

The Deputy Chief looked grim. I’d given him a tall order, that was for sure. I inhaled the lemon vapor and let it burst from my nostrils while he spoke. “Argus, this is going to take every favor I have ever made in this job. And let’s be crystal clear…I don’t like you. I hate you, Argus.” There was a pause. “…But god damn it, I respect you.” He pulled out his own commlink and started to type up a message. “I’ll get the ball rolling and by this time tomorrow we sh-”

He was cut off by both our commlinks chiming at the same time. He looked at the screen and blinked. “Well, looks like it’s a moot point, Armstrongman.” His stubby dwarf hand turned the screen to me. “Looks like Rambo just iced that trucker Beans…in Chicago. That’s a whole lot of not our jurisdiction anymore.”

And as I looked at the report, the cold, dispassionate words on the screen made my blood run cold. He’d gotten away. He’d escaped.


	4. Cat's Paw

**Case 637435: Attempted Murder, Breach of Trucking Contract, Breaking and Entering, Assault, Gross Sexual Misconduct, Trespassing, Unlicensed Gang Warfare, Unauthorized Corporate Espionage, Second Degree Murder***

***Investigation Suspended Pending Shift in Jurisdiction**

Dak Rambo leveled the Ares Predator at the dwarf, pulling the trigger without a moment’s hesitation. The dwarf juked, trying to avoid the shot, only to fail and take the slug square to the chest. Through the headset sampling the high-powered microphone, I could hear the sound of his sternum cracking like celery in unison with the plume of crimson spurting out of his chest. The diminutive trucker started to stammer out a protest, clutching his chest, only to be silenced by Dak. The next shot flew directly into the forehead of the target. This time, the gut-turning sound of bone shattering was accented with the wet, sickening sound of a man’s brain being scrambled at super-sonic speeds. The dwarf’s head jerked back, mouth agape as he crumpled to the floor. The carnage only continued from there, but I stopped it, tapping my deck and rewinding a few framed, watching a loop of the tattoo-scrawled lowlife wasting Beans, the crusty dwarf’s head snapping back over and over, his coarse, filthy beard speckled with blood and grey matter. By the time I head the knock on my cubicle wall, I’d lost count of how many times I’d seen the spark of life leave the dwarf’s eyes.

“Argus Armstrongman?” I turned in my swivel chair to find a Rubenesque woman in a dauntingly expensive custom-tailored pantsuit. She had legs for days and curves for weeks, and her rich café au lait skin was pampered and healthy. Her appearance triggered some sort of flag in my mind; something was off about her, and it wasn’t just that she was obviously too well paid to be working here. It wasn’t until I really focused that I noticed her ears weren’t human or even elven. The woman’s round, cherubic cheeks rose up to a set of feline ears covered in ebon fur, partially cloaked by her dark tresses of proper metahuman hair. What’s more, the eyes behind her dark, designer sunglasses were narrow slits in an iris of gold. Didn’t see many Changelings in Indianapolis, so it was always a jarring sight.

“Detective Armstrongman works just fine.” I faced her squarely, standing up. She was still a few inches taller than me, but she no longer towered over me like some massive jungle cat.

The Changeling woman craned her neck to the side, looking past me at the infinite murder of the trucker known as Beans. “If I’ve come at a bad time, I can come back later.”

My arm swung back, tapping the deck and closing out of the surveillance video I had found from Chicago. “No, it’s fine. I was just working on a case.”

Her lips canted up in a mischievous smirk. “I was under the impression the Beans case wasn’t under the purview of the Indianapolis Branch anymore.”

My blood ran cold. There was nothing I hated more than having questions without answers. It made my skin prickle with nervous energy. “And just what do you know about Beans?”

She now turned, sauntering away to hide her face. But it did nothing to hide the devious glee in her voice, knowing I was on edge. “I know you want to catch Dak Rambo. And I know my employers want you to catch him.”

My synapses were firing fast, trying to put together just who this catwoman was and who she worked for. I’d never seen her before around the office. She didn’t seem like Lone Star, and if she was, she’d be way up the food chain. It took every fiber of my being to keep calm. Getting riled up would only give her more power in the conversation. “Catching bad guys is my job, Ms. …”

“Noire. Catrina Noire.”

A good few seconds ticked by while I stifled a laugh. “Your name is…Cat?” Some times are harder to keep your composure than others.

Her feline ears flicked in frustration, lowering downward. “I would prefer if you would call me Ms. Noire. More to the point, who I am is of little important. I come offering you a chance of a lifetime.”

I lowered myself back into my chair and turned to my workstation computer. “Chance of a lifetime, huh? Does it involve signing up for the “Trideo of the Month” club? Because I’ve been burned before.”

More involuntary ear flicks from the Changeling. I was obviously getting under her skin. Good. The less she could play the stone-cold Corporate Femme Fatale card, the better it was for me. “Detective Armstrongman, I am trying to have a serious discussion with you.”

“Lady, if you think “Trideo of the Month” isn’t serious, try cancelling a subscription.”

She finally lunged forward, grabbing my chair and spinning me around with a cat’s speed and grace. “I am trying to give you Dak Rambo, you idiot!”

My mouth opened up, slack and fumbling for words. It took my brain a second to catch up. “Dak’s gone. He’s in Chicago. Not my area of operation. I couldn’t even-”

“He’s not in Chicago,” she cut in. “Not anymore. After Beans, he and the NeoScum skipped town and headed out West.”

“NeoScum? Who the hell are they?”

The Cat in Armani just shook her head, giving me a chiding cluck of the tongue. “You’ve been hunting him and you don’t even know what he and his motley crew have been calling themselves? You really are two steps behind.” Her playful smirk returned, taunting me. “Lucky for you, I’m here.”

“I thought it was unlucky to cross paths with a black cat,” I quipped angrily.

A soft, self-satisfied purr rumbled up from her throat. “Maybe. But not for you. Not right now.” She tossed me a business card. “We’ll talk later. Somewhere we can really go over the details.” And with that, turned and walked right down the row of cubicles and out the door, never looking back.

I wanted to go after her, but I knew I was being watched. My superiors had justified suspicions that I wouldn’t be able to let the Rambo case go. If I chased after Ms. Noire, I’d just be throwing fuel on a fire that some smug bureaucrat like Dusseldorf could use to roast me. The better plan was to just stay put, wait for my shift to end, and then meet her. As thoughts of just who she was and who she was working for swirled in my brain, I couldn’t help but inspect her business card. Turning it over, I found a messaged scrawled on the back: Cognitia Memory Storage at 8 PM. Using my personal comm, I tapped a message to her contact information on the front of the card: “See you there.”

“Looks like it’s a date,” I muttered softly to myself, tucking the card into my pocket. Sure, it was a date with a mysterious woman in some creepy building that copied people’s brains, but beggars can’t be choosers.

* * *

By the time I had left work, the night had claimed Indianapolis once more, pulling everything but the brilliant, gaudy neon hues out of the city. The drive to Cognitia Memory Storage wasn’t long, but it felt like ages as I played out the possibilities in my head. Maybe Ms. Noire wasn’t on the level? Maybe she was going to try and leave me face down in the gutter with a few new ballistically-installed entrances? Maybe she was working for Rambo? Maybe she was just full of drek? There were a million ways this could come back to bite me in the ass, and I was beginning to question my sanity more and more. But I kept on driving until I saw the dingy, filthy storefront in the strip mall.

Cognitia was one of those places where people could scan their thoughts into a digital format. It was essentially meant to be a backup for your mind in case something happened to you. And while the technology had been useful for copying people’s experiences, it hit a major snag: you couldn’t put the memories back into an organic format. There was no way to load the memories into a host or surrogate. They were just there: digital data converted from an analog being.

Climbing out of my squad car, I did an initial search with my cyber eye, only to come back empty handed. Either there weren’t any traps, or I was going to die very, very surprised. With a deep breath, I walked up to the door, my boots carefully treading over the concrete. Even though the shop was obviously closed, it was unlocked. I braced myself and pushed the door open, creeping into the lobby to find Catrina there, talking to some Matrix vid feed only she could see on those sunglasses of hers.

“Yes, I know that. But these things take time and…listen, I have to go. I’ll contact you.” She then made a motion in the air with her hand, closing the feed down and looking at me. “I’m glad you came, Detective. I know this must all seem very suspicious.”

“Suspicious doesn’t begin to describe it. But I’m here, so let’s talk.” I reached into my coat and pulled my vape out, pressing the cold metal of the mouthpiece to my lips and inhaling a stream of mango flavored stimulants, letting the residual gush of vapor jet out of nose.

The feline Changeling cleared her throat, changing her tone to something oratory. “Detective, I represent an organization of particular clout that wants to make sure that Dak Rambo and his NeoScum hoodlums are put down. Hard. They’ve already caused far too much trouble and I sincerely doubt they are done.” She took step after careful step, accenting her words with her approach. “That’s where you come in, Detective. You’re driven. You’re smart. But more to the point, you’re willing to do whatever it takes to catch your culprit.” By this point, she was almost toe to toe with me, her eyes looking down at me. “I mean, just look at the Maguffin Case.”

My jaw clenched, a physical response to the mental effort of blocking out all the pain and strife that damn case had caused me and those I love. “If you want my help, you should know my first rule: don’t ever bring up the Maguffin Case. Ever.”

She took a step back, holding up her hands in a conciliatory manner. “Of course. My apologies. But the fact remains that you are someone we need to bring in Dak.”

More mango poured over my tongue and into my lungs, pausing there before exhaling. “That’s all well and good, but I have a job. And my job right now is not chasing him.”

Those lips pulled up into that Cheshire grin, baring her pronounced fangs. Her left hand rose to the air once more, gesturing to some phantom interface. My comm buzzed and my cyber eye popped up a notification: a forwarded message from Catrina Noire titled “Temporary Reassignment of Argus A. Armstrongman”.

My pulse spiked, mouth dry as the Sahara as I skimmed the prospective orders from Lone Star Security Central Office. It took a few seconds to work up the saliva necessary to reply. “How did you get this? Corporate doesn’t just tear people new orders like this.”

“They do for my client,” she retorted.

“And just who are they?” I asked.

“People who can’t work safely with Dak Rambo out there.”

And that was when the puzzle came into picture. “The National Society of Honored Truckers…”

Her golden eyes went wide with surprise, showing off more of her narrow pupil-slits behind her Matrix shades. “How did…?” She trailed off though, settling into an amused expression. “I guess this just goes to show we got the right man for the job. The question is whether or not you’re smart enough to take the job.”

I shut off my vape and stuck it back in my pocket, pondering the prospects. I wanted to make a rational, informed decision, but I honestly couldn’t. In my heart, I knew I couldn’t be calculated about this. I was a bloodhound and I’d gotten the putrid scent of a psychopathic murderer trucker. There was no giving up. Nobody else was going to bring him in but me.

“I’m in,” I muttered. “I’ll take the job. Though I don’t know why we had to come here for you to make the offer.”

“Oh we’re not here for the offer, Detective. We’re here for something else.” She then quickly turned and strolled over to a counter and picking up a memory stick and tossing it. “We’re here for this.”

I caught the stick and looked at the letters written on the side in black permanent marker, unable to stifle a bitter laugh. “Beans? You’ve got to be kidding me…”


	5. Road Ghost

**Case 637435: Attempted Murder, Breach of Trucking Contract, Breaking and Entering, Assault, Gross Sexual Misconduct, Trespassing, Unlicensed Gang Warfare, Unauthorized Corporate Espionage, Second Degree Murder**

It had been years since I had left the metropolitan area of Indianapolis, but the flat expanse of Illinois was exactly as I remembered it: a monotonous grid of monstrous corporate soy megafarms, attended by a fleet of hovering drones and massive lumbering combines. The floating disks darted like dragonflies over the fields, spraying nutrients and pesticides on some sections while the gargantuan combines lumbered about, harvested the bounty of the fields. This prolonged modern agraria played out to the soundtrack of wind whipping over the open top of the Saab Dynamit that Catrina Noire had procured for our trip. Its smooth curves and gleaming yellow composite body were equal parts work of art and engineering marvel. The feeling of my hands on the steering wheel was the closest thing I’d ever felt to unconditional love. In my mind, I was already naming it Tracy.

My silent adoration of the chariot bearing us forward to Dak Rambo was interrupted when Catrina cleared her throat. “What is it?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the tediously straight roads.

“Listen, Detective. I know you’re not a fan of the League’s plan.” She paused, trying to think of her next words carefully. “But with Dak and his NeoScum crew having left Chicago, we really need a lead.”

“We have a lead,” I corrected her. “This Tech Wizard character has a relative nearby in Peoria. And not just a relative: a grandmother.” My eyes left the road for a second to connect with hers, hoping to impress upon her some fraction of my surety in this theory. “From all my research, Tech Wizard loves the old dame. Loves her bad enough he wouldn’t skip the area without saying goodbye first.”

Catrina sighed, her ears flicking in frustration. Or maybe it was just the wind of the road. Being a Changeling with feline traits, she didn’t have normal human ears. The large triangles of fur on top of her head weren’t just for show. “Fine, so maybe they did go to visit the wizard’s grandmother. Do you honestly believe they will still be there?”

“No,” I said, my tone sinking slightly. “But it could give us a trajectory to follow.”

“Alternately, we could just use the data we got from Cognitia.” Catrina’s voice was confident and slow, with just a hint of exasperation. It was almost like she was talking to a child. “We could slot Beans in right now. He knows Dak. He could give us information and help us figure out not just where the NeoScum have been but where they will be.”

My gut sank like it was full of stones. “You’re not the least bit creeped out by that? Taking a person’s memories, turning them into data, and having them live on after him?”

The feline fatale paused, the overcast afternoon of the Illinois plains only barely highlighting her dark skin and rounded cheeks. “No. Beans is dead. The only reason these memories exist at all is because he was afraid of a hereditary neurological disease among dwarves.” She adjusted the Matrix sunglasses that would have cost me a month’s salary and looked at me with those narrow slit-eyes. “These are here for us to use. That is that.”

“I’ll be honest, I was hoping for a little bit more nuanced discussion of the situations.” My frustration at her curt answer caused my foot to press down on the accelerator.

“You’re not in Indianapolis anymore, Detective. I think it’s time you give up on idealistic notions and focus on what really matters: results.” And with that, she produced the old data stick and slotted it into the dashboard console without a second thought.

“Wait, I-”

But it was too late. Whatever programs were on the stick executed and a thick brogue poured out over the car’s speaker system. “Ack, that one hurts like a bastard! Never goin’ to get used to that-” He paused. “Wait a minute. What’s goin’ on? I can’t see! Sweet Merciful Satan, my eyes!”

“Beans?” I asked, not really sure how to address the disembodied consciousness. “Beans, calm down. My name is Detective Argus Armstrongman. I’m with Lone Star Security and-”

His voice became more and more panicked with each second. “This was Rambo, wasn’t it? How did he find out about the job? Waitin’ until I was in here, getting’ my brain scanned to finish me off? What kind of cowardly, spineless, no good-”

Ms. Noire chimed in in an assertive voice. “Computer, mute process Beans.” And with that, Beans was silent. “Now then, if you are done losing your mind, I have some information for you. Beans, you are dead. Dak Rambo shot you in cold blood in Chicago and fled the city. We want you to help us track him.” The air hung heavy for a moment, then she laughed to herself. “Oh, sorry, I forgot I muted you. Computer, unmute process Beans.”

The speaker erupted in a volcanic pyroclast of pure vitriolic hatred. Profanity and threats the likes of which I had never heard spilled out in a devastating landslide, making me grip the steering wheel tighter. But Catrina just sat there, that confident smirk on her face. She lived for this: the feeling of power over others.

“-and then I’ll make you sit on the shards while I piss in your dad’s beard!” Beans finally relented, his inorganic virtual lungs expended of the fictional resource he knew as air.

Catrina gave a soft cluck of her tongue. “That is not way to speak to your new partners, Beans. If not for us, you would just be a corpse in a morgue, being harvested for organs. Now? You’re at least a mind. A mind who I have no doubt would love to go home to his family someday, yes?”

“Listen, you daft cat. I don’t know where Dak is. I don’t even know that Dak killed me!”

“But you know him. I bet you have some ideas where he might have scurried off to.” The feline purred softly. “If you help us catch him, we’ll see about getting you a proper mechanical body and sending you back home.”

Even though he wasn’t real, I could hear the hitch in Beans’ voice. “I can’t help you, damn it. So just send me home. Let me see my wife. Let me see my family!”

I turned to cat, shooting her a glare. “This isn’t working. He’s not going to help us.”

The expression I saw on that woman’s face chilled my blood to pure ice. It was equal measures fury and desperation, shaken and served on the rocks. “I’ll let you go if you can answer me one simple question.” The predator hunched forward in the car’s passenger seat, looking into the nonexistent eye of the console. “What is your full name, Beans?”

The simulacra of the dead dwarf’s memory laughed softly. “Really? My name? My name is Beans-”.

Before he could finish, Ms. Noire cut him off. “Computer, erase object Beans dot name dot middle dash last.”

Beans hung right there, a forgotten syllable hanging on the air. He choked out an attempt to push on, but faltered. “My name…my name is Beans…Beans…”

I’ve never heard a computer cry before. I’ve heard artificial beings mimic the depths of despair on trideo feeds, but it was always passed through the filter that is the Matrix. Everything and everyone comes out a shallow copy when it’s passed through the digital feed. But those deep, shuddering sobs blaring out over the speakers were so deep and painful, I felt my gut turn as I yanked the memory stick out and slammed on the brakes, sending up screeching down that Illinois highway until we stopped on the side.

“What the fuck was that?” I blurted out, clutching the memory stick tightly. My knuckles were white. “What kind of absolute drek was that?”

Her shades hid her eyes, but her body language said I had surprised her. The claw marks in the armrest didn’t do her any favors. “I am getting results, Detective.”

“You are torturing someone!”

“I am altering a program which fails to cooperate.” Her ear ticked anxiously. “That is not Beans. It’s a ghost.”

“Even if it is just a ghost, how about a little respect for the dead?” I took the stick and put it in the pocket of my Lone Star issued windbreaker. “I am going to hold on to this. We are going to cool down and try again when we get to Peoria.”

“Listen-”

“No, you listen.” My normally cool demeanor was melting rapidly. My hands fumbled for my vape but couldn’t find it. “You said you need my help. Well you’re not getting it unless you stop with this whole routine. Good cop, bad cop only works if you’re a cop.”

Catrina was about to speak out, but her mouth hung open. She looked out, unbuckling her seatbelt and rising up out of the body of the vehicle to survey the horizon. “Argus…” She trailed off, dumbstruck.

My head turned and I saw the carnage ahead of us: a city ablaze, the flickering lights and billowing smoke testaments to the conflict ahead. And directly in front of us on the roadside was a large black LCD screen with scrolling green letters spelling “WELCOME TO PEORIA”.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is not in the NeoScum Canon.

**Case 637435: Attempted Murder, Breach of Trucking Contract, Breaking and Entering, Assault, Gross Sexual Misconduct, Trespassing, Unlicensed Gang Warfare, Unauthorized Corporate Espionage, Second Degree Murder**

Peoria was a nightmare hellscape: a bleak, spine-chilling expanse of crumbling urban overexpansion and atrophy. And while that description could have been applied a week before, the presence of mobile mechanical malefactors only magnified the menace. Drones from Pie in the Sky Pizza, Fat Don’s Sandwich and Stims, Nothing but Soy, and many more crossed the sky in a systematic grid, an aerial armada stalking the prey below. The thump and hiss of hydraulics came from the distance, among the building of downtown. A panicked figure darted from cover, only to be set upon by a swarm of robotic entities, ranging from cyberpets to load lifters. The poor bastard cried out in one single shriek and was silenced just as quickly.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Catrina Noire said, her eyes unreadable behind her Matrix shades. Her tone was cold and callused but I could see the faint lines of worry and dread in the corners of her mouth.

I pulled a deep drag of strawberry flavored vapor out of the slender mouthpiece, letting the drugs settle into my bloodstream before I exhaled and put the vape back in my jacket pocket. “We have to be here. I know the Tech Wizard had to have stopped here. I feel it in my gut. And if we can find his grandmother, we can find a clue where they went.” I turned to her and tried to engage her through those glasses of hers. “You hired me because you know I can find Dak, so let me find him.”

Our expensive sports car cautiously crept along the city streets. The retirement facility wasn’t far from away. In spite of the carnage that had swept the town, it looked like most of the conflict had shifted away, affording us a window of opportunity.

She crossed her arms and gave a petulant sigh. “I still think we should give Beans another shot. I-”

“We’re not doing that. Not until you and I sort out what we’re going to do with him.”

“It,” she corrected with a demonstrably confrontational tone.

I was about to argue with her, but before I could take the bait of her obvious challenge, the steering wheel wrenched from my grip. Rubber screamed out on pavement and the engine revved in a roaring call to action. “What the hell?” I blurted out, trying to process the events.

The screen of the car’s dash console went black. A waterfall of unspaced white text, scrolling down the liquid crystal display and proclaiming DEATHTOALLHUMANS. The speaker system joined in, crying out in a maximum volume the same repeated threats in digital text to speech tones. My ears rang out and I could see Catrina clamp both her palms over her sensitive feline ears.

“It hacked the car!” Catrina cried out, barely audible over the blaring sound system’s murderous mantra.

I struggled to regain control, reaching under the steering wheel for the emergency manual override. But by the time I pulled the handle and was able to control the vehicle again, it was too late. Even my wild swerve wasn’t enough to keep us from crashing into the side of a large decorative fountain. The front of the car crumbled like tissue paper, wrapping around the statue of a beautiful nude troll woman while also fracturing the sculpture into a dozen pieces. Catrina and I lurched madly, arrested by the seat belts and air bags. My chest and face ached from the force of the stop, but I was alive for now.

Staggering from the totaled car, I stepped out into the basin of the fountain, soaking my vintage Converse high tops. I heard the passenger door open, following by a splash as Ms. Noire fell to her knees, still staggered and aching from both the crash and the auditory assault. I hussled to the other side and helped her to her feet, practically dragging her through the vacant streets to avoid detection. “Come on!” I barked at her, hoping she wasn’t deafened. “We have to go!”

Her Matrix shades were broken, each half dangling from an ear. The eyes behind those shades were wide and frantic, struggling to keep up with what was going on. “W-what?” she stammered, fighting to stand on her own and keep pace.

With my free arm, I pointed to the retirement home down the street. She nodded and put managed to support more of her own weight. Even in the middle of a robot uprising, I couldn’t let Dak Rambo out of my thoughts. If we didn’t find that old woman, all this was for nothing.

After what seemed like an eternity of awkward escape down the vacant streets of Peoria, we came to the large synthetic wood door. Our hands fumbled for the pull handle, only to find it locked. “God damn it,” I grumbled and slapped my palm on the door.

“Help! You have to let us in!” Catrina cried out.

There was a shuffling from the other side of the door, then a masculine voice spoke up, muffled by the door. “Um, actually, we don’t have to help you. I am under no such compulsion, either societally or physically.”

Catrina and I looked at each other, exchanging glances that were equal measures of disbelief and confusion at the obnoxious reply.

“Listen,” I said, my tone forced into the soothing register of conflict resolution. “We’re not robots. We’re humans who just came into town and our car tried to kill us. Please, let us in! If you don’t let us in, our blood is on your hands!”

Two voiced erupted into sardonic laughter from the barred sanctuary. I swore I could hear the clop of hooves before a feminine voice sneered at us. “That is quite literally an impossibility because you would be murdered out there. So, unless we went out later, found your mangled corpses, and rubbed our hands in your blood-”

“Or,” the male voice cut in, “there were some sort of outlandish method of execution employed by the robot which would send your blood through the door, onto our hands.”

“Yes,” the woman agreed. “Either of those would make your idiom honest. So, do you think your blood is going to end up on our hands now? Hm?”

Catrina began cursing softly. “What kind of assholes are these?”

“The kind of assholes who should open that door unless they want be guilty of impeding an official Lone Star investigation.” My voice was overly dramatic. “And that’s assuming I don’t just find another way in there and shoot said assholes.”

There was a pause, followed by a less confident quip from the female. “While you have no way of knowing we are centaurs, you should know that we are not assholes. Assholes can’t talk.” And then the door’s lock clicked open. The door swung open, revealing a fat centaur man and a younger female.

“I don’t know,” I said, shouldering past them. “Doors open and all I can see are assholes.”

Catrina followed behind, hissing ferally at the two centaurs and muttering curses in a foreign language I didn’t understand. As we strolled in, we saw a collection of about twenty to thirty survivors. Among the masses were a massively, almost grotesquely muscular woman, an elf that could best be described as masculine, and a dwarf gentleman who was covered in cybernetic augmentations. I was about to talk to someone when my eyes fell on a woman in the corner of the waiting room, kept in some advanced sarcophagus. Silently, I stepped over to the almost skeletal woman.

I cleared my throat and looked through the glass. “Excuse me, ma’am. Are you Marjorie Purpler?”

The husk of an old woman looked up at me, the whirring chirp of her respirator a macabre march toward mortality. Her eyes looked at me, falling on the Lone Star badge emblazoned on my jacket. Her halting mechanical voice croaked out. “And what do you want with my sweet Squirt, you jackboot bastard?” Her face twisted to an unnatural disgusting grimace.

“Listen, Mrs. Purpler. I know you son visited you.” It was a bluff, but it was the only card I had in my hand. “He’s travelling with a man named Dak Rambo. Trucker with tattoos, hat, and cat eyes.”

She peered into my eyes, sizing me up before she spoke. “He was a nice boy. What do you want with him?”

“That nice boy has a rap sheet as big as my…” I paused. “It’s big, ma’am. And his latest crime is murdering a fellow trucker in cold blood.”

Her eyes darted back and forth, processing the information before warbling back in her fake voice. “Then I bet the fucker was a real bag of shit. Now, how about you get out of here, Lone Star scum?”

I had figured it would go like this. Her family had been displaced by Lone Star in the past. A lot of magic users had gotten the raw deal. It wasn’t right, but it happened. It was a scar that neither she nor those magic users would ever forget or forgive.

“Ma’am, I’m not trying to hurt your grandson. I’m just looking for Dak. He’s done a lot of things that have people after him. People who are dangerous.” I leaned forward and put a hand on the glass. “People who wouldn’t hesitate to kill Squirt just for riding with Rambo.”

Catrina put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me back. “Marjorie, we just want to bring a murderer to justice. We won’t hurt your grandson or the others. And if you help, we can even try to help Rambo. Keep him alive.” I tried to keep my hackles down at the notion of showing Dak mercy.

Her facial muscles shifted into an assisted look of dread and grief. I have no doubt if she could have, she’d have started crying. But she just frowned deeply and spoke. “If you hurt my Squirt, don’t think for a second me being in here will keep you safe.”

“I know it doesn’t mean anything to you, ma’am,” I replied, hoping my sincerity made it through the heavy glass barrier, “but I promise I won’t hurt your grandson.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t mean a thing.” She let out a forced hiss of a sigh. “I overheard them talking outside my room after they left. After a disturbingly long period of conversation about Squirts artificial penis, they mentioned heading west to Los Angeles.”

“Los Angeles?” Catrina asked incredulously.

“Yep, Los Angeles.”

I tried to hide the nervous energy of the chase, stuffing it down into my gut. “Thank you, Mrs. Purpler.” I turned around just to see the wooden door splinter. The two centaurs turned, only to subsequently be crushed as the doors burst off their hinges, falling down onto the equine pair with a grizzly and shamefully-satisfying squish.

“Ow!” Cried out the male centaur! “Oh god! Oh god, I’m dying!”

The female centaur coughed. “Are…you speaking literally?”

“Of course I am, Little Sis. Of course…I…am…” And then he let out a soft death rattle.

“Good. Because I am too.” And she let out a similar death rattle.

The cloud of smoke and dust that billowed in from the shattered door frame slowly dissipated. There, floating before us on a litter held aloft by four drones, was a large vending machine robot. “No orders. No riddles. Only death.” And then a flurry of milkshakes, burgers, and cutlery was blast out of the service chute like a load of buckshot from shotgun.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is not in the NeoScum canon.

**Case 637435: Attempted Murder, Breach of Trucking Contract, Breaking and Entering, Assault, Gross Sexual Misconduct, Trespassing, Unlicensed Gang Warfare, Unauthorized Corporate Espionage, Second Degree Murder, Conspiracy to Commit Robotic Uprising**

In my time as a Lone Star Security detective, I’ve had a lot of unique experiences. I’ve felt the rush of pure, white-knuckle adrenaline that comes with a high speed vehicular pursuit. I’ve felt the gnawing dread that comes from looking down the barrel of a gun held by some tweaked out ganger. I’ve even felt the heartbreak of losing a partner, having their blood pump out through the gaps in my fingers as I tried to dam the hole until the paramedics could arrive. Honestly, I thought there wasn’t a thing on this planet that could surprise me.

And then I got attacked by a vending machine and its friends, taking that whole notion and tossing it out the window.

I had tried my best to fend off the horde of robots with the rest of the survivors, taking shots from cover, hoping to thin their ranks enough that the survivors could make a break for it. Round after round cracked through the air, meeting with steel and plastic, sending sparks and shards out the opposite side of the invader. It proved futile, though. Like some kind of mechanical hydra, every drone dusted was replaced with two more. Worse still, any attempt to take on the vending machine ringleader was thwarted, shots intercepted by humming aerial drones willing to sacrifice themselves for their food service master.

Catrina was beside me, having produced a small, silenced pistol from her suitcoat. She wasn’t as good as shot as I was, lacking the formal training and countless hours on the range. But she held her own, taking her time, focusing and lining up just right before squeezing the trigger. She was an impressive woman, gifted with the ability to turn her heart to ice in an instant. Catrina Noire wasn’t some corporate coward. She was a vicious feline in the finest tailored threads.

Too bad it wasn’t enough. They were advancing and it was only a matter of time before we were overrun. But with the wounded and the elderly slowing us down, a total retreat was suicide. If we stood our ground, we died. If we ran, we died. Someone would have to cover the escape.

“Catrina!” I screamed out over the carnage of gunfire. “Get these people out of here!”

She ducked back behind cover, dropping an empty magazine and slapping another in with a sharp click. It was only after the action was complete that she processed my words. “What about you?”

“I’ll buy you time, then meet back up with you.” I said, lying through my teeth. There was no making it out of this.

She wanted to argue. Was it compassion that made her face twitch in frustration? Pride? I couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, her survival instincts won and she gave me a subtle nod. Then she dashed to the back of the room, flagging the other survivors. She was calling to the others, instructing them to follow, but I could barely hear her. My mind was focused on how the hell I was going to keep them alive.

That’s when I noticed it: a loose cart of oxygen tanks used by some of the nursing home’s residents, resting across a veritable no-man’s land in the cover of flipped furniture. It was a stupid, crazy idea but it was all I had. Vaulting from behind the upturned table I had hidden behind, I sprinted across the seemingly vast expanse of open floor. The whole time, I wanted to look and see if Catrina and Marjorie and the other residents were making it out. But I knew in my gut that if I looked, I’d be dead. My legs burned, putting every bit of force the muscle fiber could generate into closing the distance to those tanks. I could feel projectiles whizzing past me, bursting forth from the hovering hulk’s midsection like a machine gun volley. The canisters drew closer and closer. I honestly thought I could do it.

And then, in an instant, my ribs were screaming in pain. My legs froze, the signal between them and my brain scrambled, forcing me to fall forward and skid roughly across the floor. My sprint had given me enough speed that I managed to flop gracelessly the rest of the way before clattering into the oxygen tanks. The center of my chest pulsed and pounded with hurt, ribs bruised if not outright broken. Each breath was an exercise in agony, enough to make my vision blur to black, only to pop back in later. Only this time, the machines had made their way forward, breaking the line. I looked back to back door the others had used to escape. A few hovering delivery drones zipped past like dragonflies, but the bulk of the robotic uprising was marching forward as a steel tide, ignoring me, assuming me dead.

“From Hell’s Heart, assholes,” I croaked out, coughing up blood. I reached back and grabbed two tanks in my right hand. Ignoring the brutal, tooth-cracking pain in my sides as I twisted and lobbed the cylinders, I trained my cybereye on them, waiting for the targeting software to train in. My pistol, trembling, aimed at the makeshift explosives, and fired. In an instant, the tanks erupted in a violent shockwave of fire that shattered the door and its frame. The wall there collapsed, sealing off the escape of Catrina and the others. They might be able to make it out now.

Then all the robots turned to me.

Slipping in and out of consciousness, everything became dreamlike. One moment, I was on the floor, coughing and shuddering. The next, I was dangling from some industrial bot’s tow cable, feet kicking wildly to reach for a floor too far away. As I did this, everything but the voice of that damn vending bot fell away.

“Here is a riddle, human. What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and hangs by its next in the evening?”

If I could talk, I’d have offered him some smartass comment. But I couldn’t even muster the strength to claw at the braided cable wringing my neck. I just stared at that bot’s glowing screen, reading his dictated words.

“Well, human? Do you have an answer?”

And as I felt my essence start to dim, a muffled brogue split the silence. “I got yer answer right here, fucko!”

The crumbled, burning wreckage of the wall burst inward, sending burning splinters through the air like flechettes. All the bots that loitered there, watching my execution were instantaneously crushed by a bulky forklift-wielding loader drone. The most surreal part of it all was the holographic projection radiating from the control unit: a familiar fat, bearded face I had seen blown to pieces on a stream of Chicago surveillance footage.

It was Beans. Or rather, it was Beans’ memory piloting a loader drone through an army of robots, barreling his heavy twin tines toward crowed around me. His engine revved and he burst through them, knocking the bot strangling me on its side, letting my feet find purchase long enough to relax my binding and let me catch a lifesaving gasp of air before I hit the floor. A mere heartbeat later, Bean’s right fork drive clear and true through the food bot, impaling him and lifting him up rapidly, mashing his upper half into the ceiling. The forks dropped, then raised, repeating this until the ringleader was nothing more than a mess of burger ingredients and wires.

And then I blacked out.

* * *

When I woke up, it was dark. The nearby city’s usual light pollution was gone, leaving only stars in the moonless sky. Everything hurt, but I was just grateful to be alive. I stirred, groaning like a zombie.

“Oh good,” purred my recent travelling companion. “You made it. I was afraid you still died, despite my best efforts to keep you alive.”

Giving up on trying to sit up, I just laid there, gazing into the empty heavens. “What happened?”

“You were going to die. While we were making out, there was a loader drone. I got the idea of using Beans’ data stick to override him. Turns out, it was a brilliant idea.”

My thoughts were cloudy from the constant suffering, so it took longer to reply. “But I took the data stick.”

She coughed awkwardly. “I may have…relieved you of it before.”

“What! When?” I winced, my agitation only making my condition worse.

“When you were helping me out of the car in Peoria.” Her tone was neutral and without being able to see her body language, I couldn’t get a read on her. “In the event something happened, I need to make sure I had Beans. I still think he’s the best chance to getting to Dak Rambo.”

I was about to reply when another voice interrupted. “Dak Rambo? May he burn in Hell!”

It was then that I realized we were moving, rolling down the highway out of town at much less than interstate speeds on a loader drone. “Catrina…”

She stopped me. “Relax. Beans and I…have come to an understanding. The important thing is we are alive-”

“Sort of,” the deceased trucker interjected.

Catrina grumbled to herself. “We’re alive and we know Dak is headed to Los Angeles. So, we go west and find him there. And along the way, Beans here can help us close the distance with his knowledge of Mr. Rambo.”

But by that point, I had already slipped back into unconsciousness, with one final thought lighting my waking mind like an ember: we need to get a faster set of wheels than this.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is not in the Neoscum Canon.

**Case 637435: Attempted Murder, Breach of Trucking Contract, Breaking and Entering, Assault, Gross Screw It Is Anyone There Even Reading This?**

When I came to I was laid out in a rickety cot, overwhelmed by an acute sense of nothingness. All my limbs were floating in an infinite sensory static. My mind was a scrambled haze, but I had one concrete thought: it is really creepy not feeling tubes coming out of your arm, throat, and nostrils. To my drugged brain, the translucent tubing looked like a family of long, smooth worms, though it was unclear if they were burrowing in or erupting out.

“You’re awake,” a soft, velvet voice whispered. My eyes rolled lazily to the right to investigate, neither able nor wanting to turn my head with the foreign object jammed down my mouth. It was Catrina, sitting in a folding chair, paint chipped away from the frame. “I’m glad. I know you needed your rest, but we are still on the clock.”

Reflexively I tried to speak, only to have my mouth and throat halted by the invading plastic. If I could feel something, I’d have probably gagged and thrown up.

Ms. Noire seemed to be able to read and interpret my attempt at talk. “Just relax. You’ve been out for three days. We’re someplace called Kickapoo. Beans managed to get us here before his power supply ran out.” She stood up and stepped closer to the bed, towering over me. “There was a Lone Star affiliate doctor in this town who managed to patch you up, but you had several broken ribs and some internal bleeding.”

I didn’t try to speak again, but I hoped the vague furrowing of my brow expressed my displeasure with losing three days on the road. That was three more days Dak Rambo and his band of misfits were at large, putting miles between us. The trail was practically ice.

“Don’t give me that look. You’re no good to me dead. Once the drugs wear off, you should be good to go.” She paused, then added with a smirk. “Maybe not good as new, but good to go.”

She turned away from me, then halted, spinning back. On the bulky crate of medical supplies by my cot that served as a makeshift table, Catrina places a slender brushed-steel cylinder with a single vein of onyx running down the side. To a layman, it might have looked like nothing special. But I knew otherwise. This was nothing short of art: the Raleigh X21 vaporizer. No other vaporizer combined the slim form factor with complete voice and Matrix compatibility, as well as a one-month battery life. This was the Cadillac of vapes.

I’m not an emotional man and with the quantity of meds I had in my bloodstream, I couldn’t feel anything. But I was pretty sure I shed at least one tear.

Those full, ruby lips pulled back not into the closed, coy smirk of a puppet master. I saw, if only for a moment, an honest smile, complete with pearly whites. “Yours broke in the car crash. Consider this a bonus, for going beyond your job description.” But as quickly as her guard lowered, it came right back up. “I’m going to get everything in order here. Once you’re able to move, we’ll head out.” And with that, Catrina Noire left, and I was alone with my thoughts and a twenty-two thousand Nuyen vape.

* * *

Rolling down the highway into the open expanse of the West, I had a hard time taking in the daunting grandeur of the plains. My mind was too busy grieving for that beautiful Saab Dynamit we left totaled in Peoria. Each shudder and clunk of the old GMC Bulldog van was a dagger in my heart.

“Hey Beans,” I called back to the robo-trucker. “You’re sure about this plan?”

“Sure, I’m sure,” Beans replied in his thick brogue. The new hardware that Catrina had bought for him rested in the folded seats of the van’s rear. His memory stick was plugged into a rather impressive courier drone, fitted with a holographic projector. An eerie, ghostly facsimile of Beans’ face floated between the drone’s octocopter blades. “Dak’s killed a trucker in fine and high standin’ with the League. He’s on borrowed time. That means he’s goin’ t’ stay away from League routes like the I-80. My bet is he’s takin’ the Renegade trucker roads. That means th’ Ghost Highway, I-40.” The fat holo-face twisted itself into a sneer as the stubby copter blades fidgeted back and forth. “If we take I-80 we can make up for lost time and reach LA before then. And then? Then you let me put a bullet in Dak Rambo’s face.”

There was a heavy silence in the van, Beans’ words hovering in the air like the passionfruit mist of my new vape. Then Catrina spoke. “No.”

“Wh-What do y’ mean no! The bastard shot me in my fuckin’ face!” Beans’ robotic body revved its motors in anger.

“I mean no. The National Society of Honored Truckers has ways of doing this. And we’re taking Dak Rambo in alive.” She said it plainly, in a matter-of-fact tone. No emotion, just pure truth.

“He shot me. In the face! And his friend puked in my truck!”

“Also, you don’t have hands.” She leaned back, giving him a look as she pulled her new and not-at-all secondhand Matrix shades off. “How are you going to shoot him?”

The AI trucker hesitated, not sure how to replay. “Argus, get me a gun on here!”

I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I’m a cop. I bring Dak Rambo in alive, to face justice. Unless he shoots at me first. Then I can geek him.”

“But I want t’ kill him!”

Catrina rolled her eyes, like she was dealing with a petulant child. “Maybe you should have shot first, then.”

* * *

We’d spent almost one whole day on the road, putting the Bulldog’s engine to the test with a grueling pace. The only times we stopped were to eat, relieve ourselves, and fuel up. For the most part, the trip was just the chase, blazing through the prairie past all manner of wildlife, mundane and Awakened. As someone who grew up in the city, it was strange to see so much open space. But it wasn’t exactly hospitable territory. The Awakened World was wild and had managed to push back against civilization. In some ways it was beautiful. In other ways, it was terrifying.

At least, that’s what I was thinking before seeing the woman walking in the middle of the highway. Desperately, I slammed on the brakes, hoping to stop in time. Wheels locked and the van started to skid. I did my best to fight the vehicle, wildly wrestling the wheel. Catrina let out a gasp, clutching the door and arm rest with an expression that did all but scream “not again”. Beans lurched forward, clattering hard into the back of our seats before cursing furiously.

And then there was the thump.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is not in the NeoScum canon.

**Case 637435: Attempted Murder, Breach of Trucking Contract, Breaking and I Hope You’re Reading These Dusseldorf You Greasy Womanizing Load of Horse Anus**

The three of us stood over the troll woman sprawled out in the middle of the interstate. Or at least, Catrina and I stood. Beans just sort of hovered over us in his new drone body. The bright light of the remaining headlight glared harshly off her mottled brown and green skin in the gloom of the night. Her dark braided hair, sporting an entire craft shop of beads, was wildly tossed over the asphalt like a pool of twisting, lustrous oil. A large, brimming duffel bag had been knocked out of her hands, tumbling meters away. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, her hulking frame limp under the wide, expansive sky of the wastes.

“Holy shit,” Catrina said. “We killed her! What was she doing in the middle of the road?!”

I shook my head, speechless at the sudden descent into chaos. Just minutes before we had been driving peacefully down the road. But then it also felt like we’d been standing here, looking over the unfortunate young lady for almost four or five months.

Beans zipped around in a circle. “Well, nobody is around. We may as well just roll her off t’ the side and keep goin’.”

Catrina and I both shot him a glare that could have flash frozen steam. “We are not just going to leave her here,” I stated plainly.

The mechanized trucker let out an automated scoff. “She’s dead as a doornail, boyo. I ran her on the Matrix and got no hits. She’s SINless and the only piece of tech on her we could use to figure out who she might be is an old headset and pocket board.” Beans hovered in lower, looking me in the eyes with his holographic face. “She’s just a drifter and as sad as it might be she’s roadkill, she’s not gonna be missed. And each minute we spend mourning her is a minute we lose catching Dak Rambo.”

He had a point. We were walking a razor’s edge right now, skirting a line between catching that no-good trucker thug and his goons and losing them to the road forever. As much as I wanted to do right by the woman I’d hit, my gut was telling me that there was no right in this. My lips, damp with sweat in the desert heat, pursed as I struggled to voice my concession to the dwarf-troll AI.

But Catrina cut in, her hand pushing Bean’s floating frame out of the way. She bent down to pick up the massive drifter, grunting and struggling. “We’re going to drop her off at the next town. That’s that.”

I felt a gentle smile creep over my lips. For all her effort to craft a cold, corporate carapace, the changeling couldn’t hide a kernel of compassion in her core. I’d been ready to take the easy road, but she’d stayed my hand, intentionally or not. Maybe I should have told her thank you under that waning moon. But I didn’t, hoping instead she could feel my appreciation as we strained to lift the bulky troll into the back of the van.

* * *

Our breakneck speeds across the American West had put us just outside of Reno when we’d had our unfortunate collision. The Pueblo Corporate Council had been pushing to make “The Biggest Little City in the World” into “The Most Lucrative Cash Cow in the Land”, hoping to make it an even more depraved and decadent Las Vegas. But we we’re going to be staying long. The plan was to dive in to a hospital, drop off the girl, and hit the road. There was an eerie calm surrounding us. No music. No talking. Just the shroud of death looming over us all. As the rumbling Bulldog rolled under the garish glow of the Reno skyline, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of tension and foreboding.

I cleared my throat. “Since we’re stopping in the town, we might as well grab a bite to eat.” I looked over to Catrina. “Want to see if they have any Neo Raising Cane’s?”

She shrugged, her left ear twitching. “Maybe. Or we could see if they have a Pueblo Taqueria.”

A hulking figure jolted upright and spoke in the back. “Ooo, could we see if there’s a Slurp and Burp?”

I slammed on the brakes, veering to the side of the highway. Catrina had produced a pistol from her hip and was leveling it at the once-dead troll who was now wide eyed. “What the hell!? You’re dead! We hit you with a car!” She was tense, finger ready to squeeze the trigger.

Our revived passenger threw her hands up in surrender. “Woah woah woah! Calm down! I ain’t goin’ to do anything weird.” She sighed before continuing her southern drawl. “Now, I’m gonna say somethin’ and I don’t want you to shoot me because it sounds like I’m bein’ rude. So please don’t shoot me.”

The feline businesswoman raised a manicured eyebrow. “What? Just say it.”

“You hit a troll, darlin’.” Her voice was soft, like she was talking to a child. “If you think a van like this is gonna be the end of a troll? Bless your heart.”

As Catrina fumbled for a response to Southern condescension, I cleared my throat. “If we didn’t kill you, why were you faking being dead?”

Beans barked up. “Yeah! I scanned you! Twice!”

The troll woman laughed awkwardly. “Yeah, ‘bout that…” She rubbed one of her spiraling ram’s horns in a nervous motion. “I was just following Mortimer’s advice and playin’ dead. Lookin’ back at it? He might have just been messin’ with me.”

“Hold up,” I interjected, waving a hand to flag her down. “Who is Mortimer? You were alone when we found you.”

“Oh him? He’s just my patron spirit: Mortimer the Spirit Opossum!” She grinned from ear to ear, like that explained it all. When she registered we were all somewhat confused, she continued explaining. “I’m somethin’ of a hedge witch. Gramma trained me a little bit in Appalachian folk magic. The rest of it I just kind of wing and it works out fine.”

The three of us suspiciously eyed one another. “So, let me make sure I’m getting this right,” Catrina posed, lowering the gun. “You’re telling us that you went out into the road and got hit by a car, then played dead…because a spectral rat told you to?”

“Opossum’s are actually marsupials,” I chimed in. Catrina gave me a vicious side eye.

“Aside from misclassifying Mortimer? Pretty much.” The troll girl had an infectious smile.

“She’s obviously absolutely insane,” Catrina said, half pleading with her tone that we would agree with her.

“Oh, and she is also Rebekah the ‘Possum Witch of Bat Cave, North Carolina. But you can call be Bekah!” The was a stillness in the van as a semitruck roared by us. “So, where are we going?”


	10. Only Wreckage

**Case 637435: No, stop hitting buttons! Damn it, what did you do? It’s recording me now. Shit!**

The first thing I became aware of was the taste: a lingering sensation of battery acid and roadkill in my mouth. My head ached like there was a tiny gremlin inside, doing his best to jackhammer his way out through my skull. Despite just waking up, I was exhausted. To put it bluntly, I felt like complete shit.

As my senses returned to me, I groaned and rolled from my side. It was dark outside, the pinpoints of light in the heaven struggling to compete with the LED screen of an automobile console. A strong sense of déjà vu struck me.

I’d been here before. Slowly, I scanned around and realized it was the sports car than Cat and I had driven into Peoria. The vehicle that had been taken over by the rogue machines and crashed. But here it was, in one piece. Beans Bot and Cat were in the front, listening to some Elven TechnoFolk and talking about something. But I couldn’t make out the words over the stabbing feeling in my temples.

“What the hell is going on?” I groaned, regretting my choice to speak instantly. Every syllable was pure agony in my brain.

Cat’s feline ears perked up. “Ah, bon! You’re awake!”

Beans’ holographic representation turned to look at me. “Thought we were going to have to roll ye into a ditch. Glad t’ see that won’t be necessary.”

“Your compassion is touching,” I grumbled, slowly and laboriously sitting up. “What happened? When did I go to sleep and why do I feel like absolute shit?”

Beans synthesized a condescending laugh. “Y’ve been pukin’ yer guts out since that stop outside of Gary. I told ye it was a mistake t’ eat sushi from a Stuffer Shack.”

My stomach did cartwheels at the mere mention of the Judas of convenience food. “Ugh…wait, but what about Peoria?”

“What about Peoria?” Cat said, shooting me a confused look.

“The car accident. The robot uprising. All of that!” I muttered, only to have my stomach roll a little from the agitation.

“Non, there was no uprising.” The femme fatale feline driving chuckled.

Beansbot let out a low grumble. “Would have preferred fightin’ robots t’ talkin’ with those awful centaurs.” His voice pitch shifted and became a nasal parody of someone else. “Keep my eyes peeled? No, my eyes will remain whole, in my skull.”

Catrina played along, adopting a similar tone. “I suppose next you’ll ask us to keep our ears to the ground. Which you should know, as a centaur, is very difficult. And is also unlikely to help us find your fugitive trucker.”

“So it was pointless,” I said, dejected.

“Not completely useless. A few people saw them leaving town.” A plume of cinnamon scented vapor rolled from the front of the sports car, wafting over me and leaving my stomach in the edge of Heaven and Hell.

“Is that my vape?” I said, battling to keep what little fluids I had in my stomach where they belonged.

Her ears flattened. “Euh…I was keeping it up here. So it would not get dirty.”

I wanted to argue with her, but I just didn’t have the energy. Slumping into the seat, looking down at my shirt. Except that it wasn’t my shirt. In fact, none of the clothing I had one was mine. My Lone Star attire was replaced by a snappy white button up shirt and a long and no doubt expensive trench coat straight out of one of the old Holo-Noir serials. “Cat, why am I in strange clothes?”

“Well, you made a mess of your old ones.” She said, taking another pull from my vape. “A very large mess.”

“I didn’t know there was that much puke inside a person!” Beans commented.

I saw Cat roll her eyes in the rearview mirror. “We made a quick stop and I got you new clothes. I think they look better, and you no longer have to worry about people being less than cooperative due to your being a…well…”

“A cop?” I offered.

“I was going to use a more porcine term, but that works too.” She smiled devilishly.

I decided not to focus on the fact I was sure I hadn’t been wearing silk boxers before. Thanks to my impromptu illness, I’d been out of commission for a day and a half and Cat and our robotic sidekick had been calling the shots going…somewhere.

“Hey, where the hell are we going?”

* * *

There was a storm brewing over the horizon in Chicken Town. Wind was picking up, whipping up small cyclones of dirt and debris and feeding the eerie purple chemical flames consuming the smoldering wreck of the Pizza Rat building. Based on what Cat had told me, the place had gone up days ago. Must have been one hell of a drug lab.

I had taken my vape back from my partner/envoy from the League of Truckers, setting the flavor to a soothing ginger. Wisps of white were torn apart by the wind, blended with the thick, grey smoke of the noxious chemicals. “Think you and Beans made the right call. This certainly looks like the kind of chaos Dak Rambo would leave in his wake.”

Cat had put her large designer sunglasses back on, pulling a handkerchief out of her pocket to cover her mouth. She spoke, raising her voice to compensate for cloth muffling her. “Oui, it was a bit of a shot in the dark, but Beansbot said there was a sixty percent chance it was Monsieur Rambo.”

Even though it had all been a food poisoning induced dream, it seems I’d managed to merge a little of reality into my delusion. Beans was no longer just data on a memory stick but had managed to convince Catrina to give him a hoverdrone for a body. He floated nearby and bellow out in his aggressive brogue, “I told ye to stop callin’ me that! I’m just Beans!”

There wasn’t much point arguing with the mental imprint of a now-dead trucker. We had to find clues. My cyber eye shifted through various thresholds of the electromagnetic spectrum, hoping to find something to get us back on the trail of the NeoScum. “I’m picking up a lot of humanoid remains here, but nothing matching our suspects.”

“Aye, nothin’ from the bird’s eye eith-” Beans cut off and zipped lower, weaving through some splintered columns. “What have we here?”

I walked over, carefully stepping through the embers and the corpses. “What have you got?”

Beans was hovering over a pile of rubble, looping a slow circle. “Not sure. Doesn’t fit with the rest of this lot.”

“Great,” I grumbled, pocketing my vape and doing my best to poke through the wreckage with a sturdy piece of rebar. Sweat dripped down, stinging my remaining organic eye. I wanted to cough, but that just made breathing worse. I fought back the burn in my chest and pried through the rubble until I found it.

Beans zoomed down, copters gently humming in my ear. “Is that a-”

“Yeah,” I said, cutting him off. “It’s a real big boot. For a real big foot.”

“Sasquatch,” Catrina chimed in. I almost jumped out of my skin, unaware that she had slipped over to us. She was still holding up her makeshift air filter. “Bigfoot is not the preferred nomenclature.”

“I wasn’t saying bigfoot, I was saying it was a big foot.” I squatted down, scanning the boot with my eye. “Scorch marks, trace amounts of coarse fur, and what I’m pretty sure is some blood.” I stood up. “Normally I’d take it to a lab to process, but I don’t think we have time for that.”

Catrina shook her head. “Non, we certainly do not.” She lowered her shades, those gleaming feline eyes scoured the rubble and wreckage. “Wait, I think I see something.” She carefully tiptoed over the debris to some badly damaged remains.

Beans’ zipped over to join her. “Got a Matrix signal comin’ from the poor bastard. I think…I think he had a body cam on him.”

I joined the two of them, using the makeshift prybar to roll him over and get a look at where his face used to be, now a yawning chasm of carnage. “Can you access the cam? Play back the footage?”

Beans’ holographic head, projected from atop the drone, laughed. “Yer askin’ the wrong guy! I know as much about that techno-junk as you know ab-” Then his face glitched, splitting into a tessellation of twisting polygons. A cold, robotic voice replied. “Accessing requested data. Warning! Data file has suffered severe corruption. Attempting repair.”

I looked at Cat, unnerved by the way I had inadventently used the dead trucker like a tool. “Shit. This is…kind of upsetting.”

She shrugged. “We’ve got him. Why not use him?”

The machine that had been Beans spoke up in that lifeless tone. “Data recovery complete. Twenty-five percent success.”

The two of us shared a look as the drone hovered. I gave a subtle nod. The feline changeling addressed our extravagant and morbid trideo projector. “Play.”

Beansbot’s head vanished and he began projecting a scene from the dead man’s harness. An unfamiliar voice chimed up. “Testing, testing! Is this thing on?”

Another voice, grittier than the last, came from off camera. “Yeah, feed looks good, Ess Pee.”

The video went into a flurry of electronic snow, corruption wiping the digital record. Everything came back into focus as our cam show host picked up his comm. He selected a picture of a large sasquatch in white labeled Rhon, and spoke. “Hey, it’s Stinky Penis MacMillan. Hey, hey, you’re in the building, right? Okay. Yeah, yeah, I would like you to open a beer for me. Um, uh, can you…can you get that Dak Rambo guy in the building too?” And just like that, the image stuttered, all the vectors and voxel continuing on and on in the frozen moment, expanding slowly.

“Seems like a setup. Whoever this Rhon guy was, looks like they wanted him to hand Dak over.” I was idly tracing lines in the ash and rubble with the rebar.

Cat looked like she had something to say, but the video jolted to life, now showing a towering sasquatch with a shotgun pressed down to the point of view. MacMillan pleads, whimpering with the fear only a barrel full of buckshot can give someone. “Uh, you, hey you, you gotta, come on, wop bop do dop wop bop-”

“Bang bang,” Rhon said through gritted teeth, pulling the trigger and unleashing a thunderous roar and a spray of viscera. The massive man turned around and yelled. “I got him, Dak!” But the last K sound held out, a prolonged syllable clicking over and over. More corrupted data.

“A double-cross?” Catrina said, her elegant fingers trailing over her veiled jaw contemplatively.

I nodded, but didn’t say anything.

The video resumed. The vantage point was the same, since it was still strapped to a dead man. Dak and Rhon were speaking by the entrance, barely audible. Rhon’s voice was low and somber. “I think this is where we say goodbye. Brother-” There’s a loud click, then time jolts forward.

Dak Rambo was speaking next, his voice frantic, laced with nerves. “You got a human brother-” Another loud click, and the scene lurched into the future. “You can blow it up-”

Abruptly, the playback ended and Beans’ display coalesced back into his face. “Wh-what? What just happened?”

I didn’t have time to explain or comfort Beans and his undoubtedly endless existential quandaries. I was too busy scowling, tapping the rebar on the floor, mulling it all over.

“Something on your mind, Detective.” Catrina said, her voice a playful singsong.

I pointed the length of metal at what was likely Rhon’s boot. “This was someone Dak Rambo cared about. A brother.”

Catrina pulled the cloth away from her face, focusing on my words, my tone, trying to read the situation like the diplomat she was. “Oui. C’est vrai. So what?”

“So, unless this Rhon was a real lucky son of a bitch, he’s fragged. Blasted to nothing but a size twenty extra wide. But you know who I bet is still on the road right now?”

Her ears flattened a little at my aggressive tone. “Dak Rambo.”

“You’re god damn right, Dak Rambo.” I tossed the rebar to the side, sending it clattering loudly. “Dak Rambo had a brother. One who saved him from an ambush. And you know what Dak did? He played him! He told him to stay here and blow the place sky high.” I sneered, disgusted. “He’s a plague. A walking disaster. And he’s going to hurt everyone near him, friend or foe.”

There was a long silence, the only sounds the crackle of fire and the whistle of the swelling wind. But Catrina finally spoke. “This case…it means a great deal to you. Is it because of…?” She hesitated, unsure if she should continue.

I was on autopilot, snapping my head to the side and giving her a fierce glare. “I know you did your research. You’ve read about me, just like you’ve read about Beans and Dak. I don’t need you to play dumb and I don’t need you to act like my shrink.” It took every bit of my resolve to keep my hands from trembling as I reached into my new coat and pulled out my vape.

Catrina stepped back, surprised by the tempest of memories and emotions she had unleashed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t-”

“You hired me to be a professional. So how about you trust I can do that? Rather than using…that…to try and motivate me or manipulate me or whatever you suits do.” I placed the mouthpiece to my lips and inhaled, holding the chems in as I walked back to the car.

I didn’t look back. Maybe I should have, but I couldn’t. This was a raw nerve and I was struggling to keep my cool. Memories of bonds thicker than blood and broken bodies and shattered dreams were surging up, forcing me to ask what kind of monster could do something like this. But I had to keep going. I had to shove it all back down into the dark, dead parts of me that knew exactly who could do this: a rogue trucker.

* * *

I spent the rest of the night pouring over the evidence Beansbot and I had collected in the back of the car while Cat drove on down the highway. It took hours but eventually the pieces all came into place. The compound wafting through the air, burning my sinuses had been Crange, and the bodies piled up like firewood in the basement had been the gang cooking. It had been a trap, put in place to catch Dak and the NeoScum. Someone had called in some hired guns to put them down, only to have it all go sideways. One of the bodies was Kraenor, a brute of a troll I’d seen doing fighting for none other than “Big” Marco. Undoubtedly, Rambo and his band of sychopaths made short work of them and then ordered Rhon the Sasquatch to set the place up in flames.

But one thing was bothering me: the hit squad goons. I hadn’t found any trackable comms, serial numbers on their weapons, or even insignia on their uniforms. The only thing that stood out was their holsters. Rather than something durable or functional, every single member of the squad was outfitted with the same bargain basement model of holster. It wasn’t the kind of thing professional killers would do. There was something bigger at work here, but I was only seeing the looming shadow.

The car suddenly shuddered as the tire ran along the edge of the road. Cat clutched the wheel sharply and corrected, pulling us back into the lane. My heart was racing, focus turning from my AR display to reality. “Jesus Christ, what happened?”

Cat shook her head, muttering. “Je suis desole. I nodded off.” Her ears folded down, broadcasting her embarrassment.

There was an awkward silence, only distorted by the patter of rain on the car. Eventually, I spoke up. “Pull over. I’ll drive.”

“Detective, that is not necessary. I’m fine.” She shot me a glance, that normally predatory gaze of hers seeming softer. Even in the dim light of the vehicle, her gleaming golden irises were clearly visible.

“All the same, I’d rather stay on the road.” I winced, not expecting to sound like that much of a prick. I tried to soften it by adding, “Besides, I haven’t had as much time to enjoy driving this thing.”

The feline changeling nodded, though it was more to herself than to me. We pulled over and swapped seats, braving the rain for a few seconds. As I buckled in, she was already giving in and slipping out of her suit coat, folding it carefully as a makeshift pillow. Limbs curled and tucked until she was a comfortable ball in the back, like some enterprising housecat.

The highway was a corpse, laid flat and barren, but it still felt good to feel the hum of the car travel through fingers, engine tied to my heart through an accelerator. I pushed it, going faster than I probably should have in the rain. But it took my mind off the case and off the past, if only for a moment.

Beansbot had powered down, recharging himself from the car’s power. Catrina was purring softly from the back. It was just me, alone in the dead of the night. That wasn’t a new state of being for me. The past few years, my work was my life. Any social interactions I had with others on the force were maintained to keep things running smoothly. I had my personal life, but it didn’t define me any more than eating or breathing did. I was a detective: I found answers and I served justice. Everything else was a byproduct of that.

As the windshield wipers swept the growing sheets of water away, I felt the weight of melancholy sink in. He had loved to listen to the rain, whether it was while we were on patrol or after hours. I always told him it felt gloomy. He told me that it was comforting, like a heartbeat. Maybe I could have eventually come to see things his way, but now the sound would forever bring heartache.

How long had it been since he died? Five years? Six? There had been a time I counted his absence in days. Now he’d been dead longer than I’d known him. It felt petty and weak to hold on to my sorrow, so I dug it a grave in my heart and buried it. He was gone and I had to keep on living. That was that.

Then this case started. I was drawn in, pulled along, unable to articulate just why I cared so much about it all. But I felt it. I felt it in my bones. A man like Dak Rambo becomes a man like Tram Parnovski. Watching him shoot Beans between the eyes on that security footage took me right back to that warehouse. I could smell the acrid scent of the gunpowder. I could feel the shockwave echoing off the hard concrete. I could feel the heat of Zane’s blood on my cheek as he toppled back onto the floor.

But most of all, I could see Tram’s smile. It was the same as Dak’s smile: a manic, wild expression of pain, fury, and disregard. I could see it, through the rain, just at the edge of the headlight. And I was driving right towards it.


	11. Do No Harm

**Case 637435: Christ, is there something Dak Rambo hasn’t done?**

The energy inside the IASSD clinic was low. The place was a mess, despite a recent cleaning. All the mops and brooms had done was spread streaks of blood and gore over the floor. The staff looked haggard, pushed to the limits of metahuman willpower and medical grade amphetamines. They had seen some real shit, and something told me it wasn’t Chickenville.

As we approached the attendant working at the front desk, a young man who could only be described as plucky looked away from his terminal. His face was pulled back in a manufactured grin, the very model of social civility. His lips parted, revealing perfect, pearly whites. “Hello there! Could I get a name please?”

Beansbot was out in the car, checking the Matrix for more leads. It didn’t really seem proper to bring a hoverdrone into a street doc shop. Catrina and I exchanged glances, silently deciding who would take the lead on this. Something in her eyes told me she had this. The sultry suit knew people, and I wasn’t about to step on her toes.

I was expecting the feline fatale’s usual transatlantic smolder. Instead, I heard something more at home in the heart of Texas. “Why hello there…” She glanced down at his nametag. “Steve? You know, I have a cousin named Steve! Ain’t it a small world.”

Steve the attendant looked a little confused by her completely ignoring his request for our names. “I guess it is. Um…now, what can I help you with? Do you need to see a doctor?”

Catrina waved a hand. “Oh, no need to trouble yourself, darlin’. We’re right as rain.”

I felt her tail jab me in the side covertly, almost making me flinch. Barely managing to keep my composure, I just nodded and grunted in the affirmative.

“Well, I’m not sure what I could do for you,” Steve said, now utterly lost by the flow of the conversation.

Catrina feigned admiration, letting out a soft purr. “Aw, Steve…you’re so considerate. You and everybody here do so much already.” She put her elbows on the reception desk, leaning in. “We just need a little help. Some directions. See…” Her drawl lowered to a whisper. “We’ve got a meeting with a fella. Cat eyes. Drives a truck. Should be with a three other folks. But things went sideways and we just want to make sure we’ve still got a meal ticket lined up.” She pulled back a few inched and raised her voice, still dripping like warm honey. “You didn’t happen to see our buddy Dak Rambo, did you?”

Steve frowned, stumbling over his words. “I’m sorry ma’am, but I can’t just give you that information. The IASSD requires us to maintain a level of confidentiality, and I w-”

I half expected her to lean on the pity angle. Maybe give him the waterworks? I was wrong. Instead of making a scene, she just frowned and gently pushed the point. “Of course, I get it. And I’m not askin’ for you to let me see any medical records or anything! That would be way out of line!” She gentle traced a clawed finger over the reception desk. “I’m just askin’ if he was here and if you saw which way he was heading. We’ve got a lot of Nuyen riding on this meeting.”

Feeling the conversation starting to lull, I almost spoke. Catrina shot me a look and I bit my lip and kept quiet.

“I’d like to help you,” Steve said, conflicted in just how much to trust us. “But I honestly can’t give you the information. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a job, if you’re family, or if you and members of your outfit repeatedly offer to suck my dick, I cannot tell you or I will be fired.”

Catrina’s brow raised at the last part. She was at a loss for words. I barged into the conversation, figuring it was worth a shot. “How do we know he’s not back there on the slab, getting his organs harvested for a quick buck? Maybe you’ve got the wizard’s toe on ice to sell as an aphrodisiac? Trying to fence that cyberware? Make the elf fight in cage matches?”

Steve let out an awkward, stammering chuckle. “Wh-what? No, no no no! Nobody is cage fighting or being used as an aphrodisiac. They came here and once the doctors saved the kid, they left!” His eyes went wide and he went back to his terminal, avoiding our gaze. “Unless you have a medical issue, please move along. I can’t tell you anything.”

It was clear we’d burned him out. The kid had his guard up, and there was nothing else to be done about it. We turned away from the desk, heads hung in defeat.

As we walked toward the exit, a voice came from the meager waiting room, harsh and gravelly. “You looking for the guy with the truck?” The voice belonged to an orc woman in a large, flowing flowery muumuu. Her face was contorted, sweat beading her brow. I noticed she was clutching at her stomach.

“Maybe,” I said cautiously, sizing her up. “Want to tell me more, Ms. …?”

“Zulfie,” she replied. “Yeah, the other day the guy with the cat eyes and the delicious looking truck came in.” She grabbed her comm, selecting an app called Tastee Truckz XXX and loading in, showcasing a wide array of pickups and big rigs.

Catrina, still maintaining her disguised accent, spoke. “I’m sorry, darlin’, did you say delicious?”

Zulfie nodded, flipping through the photos. “Yeah, I was in here because I ate a toy truck and it hurt my tummy.”

“What are you here for now?” I inquired. “Another toy truck?”

“No,” she replied, not looking up from her photo gallery. “Real one this time.” Without missing a beat, she held the phone up, showing Xanadu. “He came in with an elf lady, a wizard man, a hacker man, and the sweet boy who was almost dead.”

Along the way they had picked up someone else. Someone who hadn’t left Chickenville unscathed. “The boy, do you remember anything specific about him?”

She shrugged. “Mostly that he was bleeding a lot. I think they said his name was Max and that he was the cat eye man’s sister’s kid?”

“Don’t you mean nephew?” Catrina asked.

“No, they seemed weirdly specific about that part.”

Just then, Zulfie’s expression changed a fraction. “Excuse me.” Then the large orc woman quickly made her way to a room, shuffling awkwardly, groaning and clutching her gut before lurching inside and locking the door. The wood must not have been very thick, given we could still hear her grunting with no concern for anyone outside.

I turned to Cat, slowly realizing what the woman with a gutload of automobile must be doing in there. “I she…?”

The normally cool and composed Cat seemed much less collected now, ears folding down at the uncouth sounds. But she never broke her cover, keeping that Texas twang. “I swear, do not even finish that sentence, or I will pawn your vape.”

Just then, a bestial roar of fury and carnage came from inside. The muumuu-clad woman sounded like a barbarian from ancient times, cleaving foes in half with a battle axe. There was a war going on behind that door, and it sounded horrifying.

Then, a loud, metallic thump and a sigh of relief. It was another minute before the door unlocked and out stepped Zulfie.

I looked over to Steve the Attendant, noticing the absolutely heartbroken expression on his face. “Bet you’re not looking forward to cleaning that toilet later,” I quipped, hoping to lighten the mood.

Steve’s expression only soured, sighing in abject defeat. “That…wasn’t a restroom. That was a broom closet.”

* * *

After Zulfie came back from violently firing a few pistons out of her tailpipe, she told us the rest of the details. Turns out the kid was named Max and he’d been busted up bad enough to lose an arm and gain two robot legs. To make things more interesting, the truck-hungry orc had seen Max take over Zenith’s ocular drone while unconscious. She’d even managed to get a good look at Dak’s rig, Xanadu, while in the parking lot sizing up one of the doctor’s pickup trucks. The semi had rolled out of the city westward, barreling toward Kansas City like a bullet.

Which was why we were doing the same. My foot was lead, pressing that accelerator hard. The windows were rolled down, the heat outside turned bearable by our reckless speed. My insides were tight like a canvas drum, though I couldn’t tell whether it was from concern for Max or excitement at the seeming progress we’d made on the trail. I picked up my vape and took a licorice hit off it, sending plumes out the window like a jet’s contrail.

I decided to make small talk with Cat to pass the time. “I didn’t know you could do accents.”

Her ears were tucked back, displeased with the rapid airflow. But she smiled at my comment, tugging her shades lower to peer over them. “Monsieur Armstrongman, I have many talents that you’re unaware of. But perhaps you’ll get a chance to see more?” I saw those feline eyes flicker with devious and hungry intent before the shades went back up.

Cat was gorgeous. Not my normal type, but there was no denying she had the poise, the confidence, the looks, the style. But even before things went south in my life, I wasn’t the kind of guy for that sort of thing. I could understand the appeal of it: the passion and heat and allure. But I didn’t feel those things.

Apparently, I’d taken too long to reply. Her voice was softer, but also had a dash of playful teasing. “I was only joking. Do try to relax, Argus.”

“I’m relaxed,” I lied.

I could feel her rolling her eyes behind the sunglasses. “Of course, you are. You’re the epitome of relaxed.” She held out a hand, making a beckoning motion. “Mind if I borrow your friend there?”

I looked at the vape, then her. “I don’t really like to share.”

She didn’t say anything else, just keeping her hand there, fingers extending and then rolling shut, over and over.

I sighed and took a final drag, blowing the jets of vapor out my nose while handing it to her. “Fine. Enjoy.”

“Merci,” she said with an overly sweet tone, placing her lips on it and taking her own pull of licorice.

“Don’t mention…” I trailed off, eyes on the rear view. We’d left the city limits an hour ago, venturing into the highway wasteland. There probably wasn’t another soul around for miles and miles. At least, nobody except the pack of choppers roaring up the asphalt behind us.

Catrina noticed my expression and looked back, craning around. “What the hell is that?”

I’d already put the car on auto-drive, pulling out my pistol and clicking the safety off. “It’s trouble. And a whole lot of it.”


	12. Red Asphalt, White Knuckles

**Case 637435: <<Heading omitted by investigating detective>>**

Death comes for us all. Most people think it will be a slow decline, leading to a peaceful passing in the still of the night. Some folks live under the cloud of dread, every knife and gun barrel pointed at their back. In the end, nobody is sure when or where death will take them. Some runners make it to retirement and some corp white collars get snuffed like a candle. In the end, it’s always going to be a mystery.

But some days, you’re pretty sure you’ve got the mystery figured out. Looking in the rear-view mirror to see the dust of a dozen bikes in the middle of ganger territory was one such moment. The bikes closed distance quickly, the red skin of the riders coming into focus, painting a scene that would have made Hieronymus Bosch envious. Hell itself was tearing down the asphalt of the Ghost Highway, and we were in the middle of it.

I gripped my Taurus Omni-6, thumbing the hammer as the mob of choppers met us, forming a semicircle around our rear. I looked over to Catrina, noticing her flexing fingers. She was getting a feel for her claws, just in case. “Beans,” I called into the backseat. “Beans, we’ve got company.”

The dead trucker’s brain scan let out a dismissive laugh. “Ah, quit yer bellyachin’, lad. Just let ol’ Beans at them.”

“And what?” Catrina hissed back at him. “You are in a hover drone with no weapons.”

“I’ll kick their arses, that’s what!” His rotors hummed to life, showing his eagerness to prove he wasn’t all talk.

Just as I was about to say something, there was a tap on the glass of my window. I nearly jumped out of my skin, looking over to find a woman with vermillion skin wearing an old timey powered wig. As we met eyes, she motioned with a finger, urging me to roll down my window. I obliged, the hot, dry air rushing in as the tinted glass slid down.

“Ah, thank you so much for this parlay, good sir.” The demonic woman was putting on an over the top British accent. “My compatriots and I were just admiring your automobile. Top notch! Saab Dynamit, right? I hear those are a dream to drive.”

I treated the woman like she was a cobra or a vicious dog: no sudden movements, stifled my nerves. “It is.” My thumb pulled the pistol’s hammer back slowly, halfcocked.

“I also hear they sell for a pretty penny.” The Victorian Hellspawn’s lips tightened into a terrifying grin, rows of filed teeth on display.

“Maybe I can get you the number of a dealership, Miss…” I trailed off, leaving her to fill in the blank.

“Oh, where are my manners? Forgive me.” She stood on her bike, lifting a leg over and riding with one foot planted. She bowed deeply, a theatric display of elegance. “They call me The Duchess.” Her eyes narrowed, betraying the feigned civility of her voice. “Now, how about you pull over so we can continue our little chat?”

My eyes panned over to Cat. She offered an imperceptible nod. I knew what I had to do. Without hesitation, I put the Dynamit to work, pedal to the floor, lurching forward violently.

As the sports car’s engine hammered away, I could hear the regal devil scream. “Get them! But don’t damage the car!”

My left hand clutched the wheel, knuckles turning white as bleached bone. My right hand raise the revolver to the ready. “Well, I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting that today.”

Catrina rolled down her window, making the roar of the road twice and loud. “Were you expecting it more or less than a woman who eats trucks?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, it’s about a fifty-fifty.”

Catrina reached into the rear bench seat of the care, grabbing Beansbot’s frame. “See if you can patch into the car’s stereo.”

“Wait, this plan is a load of sh-“ Beansbot never got to finish his thoughts though. The changeling feline hurled the drone out the window. It almost smashed on the shoulder of the road, but the rotors hummed to life, stabilizing it. The speakers clicked and once again we heard that familiar, gruff voice. “Yer both a pair of right bastards.”

“Fermez la bouche!” the feline spat back. “What do you see?”

Beansbot grumbled through his channel unintelligibly for a few seconds. “Ye got the fop in the wig on point with a couple of big bruisers, a few greenhorn scrappers…”

I leaned out the window to look back at them, never once letting my foot off the gas. “It looks like we’re starting to break away.” I pulled myself back into the seat, smiling faintly. “We’ve got enough in the tank to break away. It’ll be slow and steady but they can’t make ground.”

Before I could get too hopeful, Beansbot piped up. “Shit…”

“Shit? What shit?” Cat asked, craning her head out the side to look back, the wind tousling her fuzzy ears.

“Shit meanin’ I think they’ve got a decker. And…yep, they’re workin’ on shutting down the car’s subsystems.” The crack of gunfire rang out, followed by the computerized trucker’s yelp of terror. “Crazy gits took a shot at me! I can’t get any closer.”

“You know what this means, right?” I eased off the gas, letting the group of bikers close slowly.

Catrina pulled her head back in, nodding and smoothing her windswept hair down. “It means that we can’t outrun them. Which means that we fight.”

“Yep.” The choppers were closing, now only a dozen yards away. “You ready?”

She closed her eyes, exhaling through her nose before she produced a small holdout pistol from the interior of her suitcoat. “We shall see?”

The Duchess had zipped up the passenger side this time, pulling closer to the window. Once more, she shifted her weight in a way that would have surely forced even a seasoned biker to eat asphalt, craning to the window. She opened her mouth, ready to go into more stilted conversation. The mishmash of Victorian and Western was interrupted by a feral cat woman lunging from the window, slashing with her free hand, claws extended and cutting deep furrows in the powdered and rouged cheek. The ganger howled in pain and fury, veering away. She clutched her wound, pulling her hand away and inspecting the blood. I could feel the hatred welling up in her, the air splitting with her screech: “Fifty percent of the profits to the one who skins that cat!”

I was about to make a smartass comment when I saw the Duchess pull out a grenade of some kind. She effortlessly tossed the cylinder into the open window. As it settled into the floorboard, heavy jets of gas flooded out. My eyes burned and my lungs itched like I was taking a hit of poison ivy. The world was blocked out by a choking cloud of pain and suffering.

Catrina coughed and hacked, lost in the veil of chemicals. “The grenade!”

“I know!” I shouted, doing my best to probe with my foot while struggling to keep the car on the highway. Eventually I tapped the grenade and I slid down in my seat, fumbling for the source of the awful irritant. It felt like an eternity, but eventually I found it and hurled it out the window, letting the thick fog stream out the open windows.

As my various orifices stopped leaking tears and mucous and saliva with the return of fresh air, I looked over to see Catrina pulled half way out of the car by a massive troll gripping her hair. Before I could turn and level my gun at the assailant, I notice a blob in my peripheral vision. When I turned, I saw an elf woman in chaps and a fishnet top trying to jab me with a polearm cattleprod. I tapped the brakes abruptly, causing the elf to zip past us, as well as forcing the troll to lose control of her bike. Rather than going with it, she gripped the top of the car with one hand and had Catrina in a chokehold.

“Arg-gaaah!” she cried out; her voice was distorted from the powerful cords of troll muscle crushing her throat.

Despite the dire situation, I couldn’t take the shot on the troll. Cat was in the line of fire and I wasn’t confident I could keep from hitting her. Gritting my teeth, I released my seatbelt latch and swung my arm out the side, struggling to hold the wheel in my left as I took aim. One poor biker was trying to take the elf’s place, only to end up with the barrel of a gun in her face. I pulled the trigger, sending her and her bike to the pavement. Without hesitating, I poured the remaining five rounds in to the thick of the gang. One shot went wild, kicking up the asphalt. Two shots grazed metal, the force making the riders wobble and shake. But the last two found their mark, plugging two twin dwarves with lead and sending them crashing into an orc woman with a cybernetic arm.

I pulled myself back into the car, swerving slightly as I situated. The Omni was a great gun for everything except reloading, and my only reloads were in my coat pocket. Catrina had a dull, vacant expression on her face, half way to unconsciousness. There was only one thing to do: lunge across to the biker strangling my partner and club her square between the eyes with the butt of my gun. She howled out in pain, releasing Catrina, who slumped down into her seat. Before I could retreat, she’d grabbed my collar and pulled my out the window, leaving the car to coast and slowly list to the left.

“See you in hell, asshole!” the troll spat out, dropping me with a malevolent sneer of tusk.

I expected the road to rip right through my new outfit and take a few lays of skin and muscle with it. Instead, my nose stopped mere inches from the rough highway surface. I carefully looked up to see a very angry looking changeling with bestial bloodlust in here eyes. The end of her small pistol was pressed to the temple of the troll.

“Whoa whoa whoa! Calm down! You d-”

The troll didn’t get a chance to say anything else. The holdout pistol cracked loudly over the whipping wind, sending her lurching to the side, cartwheeling into a heap her three remaining companions weaved around in their pursuit.

Something wasn’t sitting right with me, and it wasn’t just the fact I was dangling outside of a moving vehicle. Shouldn’t there be four left?

I turned my head just in time to see the elf who had sped by us, bearing down like a jousting knight with her shock pole. She was going to lance Cat right in the head.

“Drop the gun!” I screamed.

Catrina’s slipped from her hand, tumbling through the air into my grip. I lined up my shot, exhales, and fired three rounds at the elf. The tire on the front of the bike shredded and her bike flipped over, crushing her in a grim feat of vehicular acrobatics. The chopper tumbled and flipped, forcing two of the remaining demons to panic and slam into each other, losing control in a twist of flesh and metal. Only the devil in the wig remained, bearing down on us like the end of days.

The Armani feline used her free hand to steer the coasting car while she struggled to haul me back to safety. By the time I was back safely inside, the Duchess had caught up to us. I placed my hands on the wheel, ready to floor it. I was cut off by a loud thump, followed by the awful screech of metal on pavement. The Duchess was crouching on the hood of the Dynamit, panting in infernal rage, blood running from her marred face.

“You!” She screamed. “You killed my sisters. My family!” Her expression was unbridled hatred, dredged from the deepest pits below.

I tried to throw her off, swerving wildly, left and right, slamming the brakes randomly. But she held fast, only growing more and more determined. “She’s persistent, I’ll give her that.”

Catrina, exhausted from fighting the troll, being strangled, and then dragging me back into the car, fumbled to reload her pistol. “Perhaps I can set up a date for you, Detective.” Even in the thick of it, she was catty.

The Duchess produced another grenade, pulling the pin out and glaring at us both. “The car isn’t worth it anymore, darlings. It’s blood for blood. And when we arrive at Satan’s domain, I will enjoy being the first to say-”

And that was when the drone slammed into her, sending her rolling over the hood and onto the road. Seconds later, the explosion shook the desolate stretch of the Ghost Highway.

Catrina and I shared a stunned glance as the radio channeled a dead trucker. “Ha! Take that, ye demonic dandy! And you two? Yer welcome.”

* * *

The adrenaline burned off quickly, tinging the thrill of victory with the fog of exhaustion. I had my vape’s stim settings on full, hoping to counteract the lulling monotony of road. Clove mist curled out of my lips before I exhaled, surging the plume outward. I looked over, placing my vape into the unsuspecting hand of Catrina. “We did pretty good today.”

She was half asleep, jolting slightly from the gift in her hand. Her ear twitched as she looked down at it, slowly realizing what it was and what I said. A slow smirk crossed her lips. “Oui,” she replied. “We did well.” She took a drag from the vape, savoring the feel and flavor.

“I did well,” Beansbot piped up, projecting his holohead.

Catrina and I broke out laughing, getting a string of frustrated curses from the drone-trucker. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt that kind of unchecked happiness and joy. It hadn’t been since the incident. Since Zane. But for just one brief sliver of time, I wasn’t thinking about Zane or Tram or Dak or anything. I wasn’t thinking that the diabolical Duchess could still be alive back there, or that she could have more friends on the road ahead. I wasn’t thinking. I was alive, driving down a terrifying stretch of highway with people who had spilled blood beside me and who had spilled blood to protect me. It was a peaceful moment: an eye in center of the hurricane. I knew it couldn’t last, but I also knew I needed it if I was going to keep on down this road.


End file.
